1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of telecommunications, and more particularly but not exclusively to a process for configuring a VDSL-type modem allowing several types of operation and such a modem.
2. Description of the Related Art
New telecommunications applications require a fast access to the Internet network and high communication rates.
DSL-type (Digital Subscriber Line) techniques have been developed and in particular the very first one, commonly known as ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line) that spreads on the network. This technique allows rates of about 5 Mbits/s on distances up to about 5 km.
Other more promising techniques will provide higher rates. It is the case of the VDSL (Very high speed Digital Subscriber Line) techniques, currently awaiting definition by standardization authorities, and which will allow asymmetric and symmetric communications reaching rates of about 50 Mbits/sec., but on quite shorter distances (about 1 to 2 km).
FIG. 1 illustrates the situation of the various xDSL-type techniques—some of which are still currently being defined by standardization authorities, in particular the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), the ANSI and the IEEE.
As can be seen in FIG. 1, while techniques of the ADSL-type (and its derived techniques ADSL2 and ADSL2+) make it possible to generalize a fast access on distances up to 5 km, highest rates are only possible with the VDSL technique that will, however, allow such rates only up to a limited distance of 1.5 km.
For this reason, it is rather common to oppose ADSL to VDSL, regarding the former as a way to carry out broadband access to the Internet for the general public and reserving the latter to niche markets and in particular for broadband video transmit applications used by residential customers or professional users, such as video conferencing that consumes large amounts of symmetric stream.
Yet, such opposition is mere trickery and it seems logical that, in the long term, consumers (both the general public and professional users) will prefer the techniques with the highest performances when they become commercially available.
Due to the increased development of ADSL in networks, it is now clear that a situation of coexistence will arise that will last for some time. The consumers who will have chosen to invest in ADSL will not agree to change immediately their expensive ADSL modems for the newer and even more expensive VDSL modems. On the other side, telecommunications operators will probably only gradually change to VDSL modems the number of modems located in their optical network units.
Thus, both symmetric and asymmetric access techniques implemented by the ADSL and VDSL technologies will have to coexist for a long time, and such coexistence will cause certain problems for both consumers and telecommunications operators.
Indeed, consumers will have to consider which type of access (ADSL or VDSL) a telecommunications operator can provide in a given geographical place, and it is a possibility that both types will not systematically be available. And operators will have to deal with consumers'—quite legitimate—reluctance to renew a modem they have just installed.
Consequently, because of this coexistence of ADSL and VDSL techniques that is going to continue, it would be desirable to facilitate consumers' choice—professionals as well as the general public—by saving them from having to consider which type of access they can subscribe to. Regarding operators, it would also be desirable that they can manage with serenity the existing hardware in various optical network units in order to allow progressive change of hardware.
In addition to the coexistence of ADSL and VDSL modems as previously mentioned, it would further be desirable that users could benefit from the advantages of both the VDSL and the ADSL techniques by allowing a user to control his/her mode of communication with the network.
This would then result in multiple functions and new applications.